Christians should 'repent' over treatment of gays: Archbishop of Canterbury

John Bingham

London: The Archbishop of Canterbury has told Christians to "repent" over the treatment of gay people as he warned that those who hold to a traditional line on sexual morality are widely seen as "wicked".

The Most Rev Justin Welby told an audience of born-again Christians in London that the vast majority of people under 35 find the Church's beliefs on the issue "incomprehensible" and equate them to "racism and other forms of gross and atrocious injustice".

While standing by his decision to vote against same-sex marriage in the House of Lords, the Archbishop, who is an evangelical, made clear that he was reassessing his own thinking, saying he wanted to get his own mind "clear" on the issue.

He urged Christians to focus less on what they are "against" in order to spread their messages. He added: "The Church has not been good at dealing with homophobia.

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"And we have to be really, really repentant about that because it is utterly and totally wrong."

He said polling suggests that the majority of Christian young people also disagree with the Church's traditional line on homosexuality.